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Unit 3 Writing in a New Genre

Jordan De La Rans

English 1101

How Films make us better

Growing up in the 2000s era, I got to grow up with so many iconic childhood films that many of you grew up with as well like Halloweentown, UP, Ratatouille and many more.  These films shaped my love for movies, and I couldn’t be more grateful for these films because they allowed me to expand my horizon of films and get into more genres like horror, action, and comedy. But as a I got older, I started to realize how important films are to us as a society and how they have a huge impact on us that not many people realize. I wanted to go back and watch these movies that we grew up with to see the message behind them that I wasn’t able to understand when I was younger. As I watched the childhood movies again, I notice how they are giving us life lessons like how to speak up, to keep working on your goals, or to even take chances because not many of those chances come back. So, for my project for Unit 2 I decided to do my research on how these films can impact us make us do better.  As I scoured the internet for answers on how these films impact us, I learned that these films could help us find out who we are, who we want to be, how we want others to see us, and how we see the world around us.  This really struck out to me because as a student in college I’m still trying to figure out who I want to be and who I am, and I know I’m not the only college student still trying to figure all this out. It’s hard to figure what we want to be but you’re not alone. These films could help us with all that because most films are always giving out a message that you can use in the real world and could help us figure out who we can be. Continuing my research, I found a TED Talk on YouTube this video was about how a lady made a film about honor killings in Pakistan and how this problem needs to be stopped. This film won an academy award and lead to a law being passed that men in Pakistan would get jail time for honor killings, but honor killings continued in Pakistan, so she decided to take her film and show it to the people in villages and small towns that weren’t able to watch it. She took her film to her hometown just so she can spread the word and help stop these atrocious acts. Many people started to support her film and learned more about the world through these films. This goes to show films can make people better by speaking out about these horrible acts around the world and stepping up to make a change. Besides films helping us learn more about the world and how we can be a part of the solution these films also help us become more social with others and allow us to be a community instead of always bring each other down which has become the normal in today’s society. These films have helped us build friendships that we never knew we could have, and I love how these can bring people together and eventually could help each other out in the real world. These friendships can your world around and make us better people and it all could happen just because of one special film. As I start to conclude why these films are so important to us, I want you to know the most important thing I’ve learned so far.  The most important thing I’ve learned doing all my research on this topic is that films let people from all over the world to connect over a movie which helps us become a better society and once we become a better society, we will see how much of a positive impact these films can have on our lives. Films can range from telling us about things in this world that our sociecty won’t talk about or just giving us a beautiful life lesson or maybe even giving us a laugh when we need it the most.  I hope everyone around our age groups can now see the true importance of films and how they can eventually help us learn more about this world or more importantly learn about ourselves.

Artist Statement

The topic I choose for this project was how films make us better people. I chose this people because growing up I loved movies and they made my childhood better. But as I grew up, I started to get into more genres of films, and I wanted to learn more about how these films can have such a huge impact on us. This project allowed me to learn more about something that has been on my mind about it but never took the time to actually find answers.  The purpose of this project was to show people how films are huge part of our lives and how big of an impact they can have on a person and our society. I wanted to show people that films can help them figure out who they want to be or even how to see this world.  The audience I really wanted to target was people around my age group that are still trying to figure out life and themselves. I thought this project could be toward them because it could help them find out who they want to be through these films or even learn to become a better person. The appeal I used is logos because I think showing evidence on how big movies are to us can really let the audience think about it. I decided to write in a persuasive genre because I wanted to persuade the audience in getting into more films so they could see for themselves how important movies can be especially when you feel stuck or want to have a good time. As I started this project it took me a while who I wanted the audience to be or even what should the genre be. At first, I wanted to do a podcast, but I didn’t think I would do well if I had done a podcast. But as time passed, I decided to make a persuasive article to really show people the importance of movies and hope for them to get out there and be a part of the huge community these films have.  I panicked thinking I didn’t pick the right audience or even the right genre, but I think now that I finished it came out pretty decent. Now that I finished the project, I think I did decent since this is my first time doing something like this while I’ve been in school. At times I feel like I could’ve picked a better genre or a different audience, but this is my first time doing something like this so for the next time I do a project like this in school I plan on doing better than this one and find an even better topic to talk about. But I am happy how it turned out I think I talked about a topic not many have ever talked about or even thought about but there was probably a better way I could’ve done it. At times this project was hard because I didn’t how I would get it done but I eventually got it done. I think this project will help me down the road in college when I get a similar project and next time it will be even better.

1 Comment

  1. Lisa Cole

    Jordan, your Unit 3 assignment is incomplete. This doesn’t look like an article at all! However, if this is what you are submitting as Unit 3, I’m accepting it.

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